LENIN150
(SAMIZDAT) REVIEW
By Lewis
Maghanga
Leninism is Marxism in the era of imperialism and
Proletarian revolution. More precisely, it is the theory and tactics of the
proletarian revolution in general and the theory and tactics of the
dictatorship of the proletariat in particular.
With the understanding of this definition of Leninism, it
becomes easy to see the relevance of Lenin’s thoughts and ideas in our
organising today.
The immediate tasks of revolutionary activists today, in the
midst of the massive global economic crisis, the ongoing life-threatening
COVID-19 pandemic, the worsening standards of living and the growing inequality
due to neoliberalism revolve around the unification of our popular struggles
into an international campaign against the capitalist system and the forging of
an international revolutionary vanguard to spearhead the working-class struggle
for a better society.
If, as has become even more apparent now under the current
economic and political conditions, the majority of the people of the world are waging
a serious struggle against neoliberalism and neo-colonialism, and if
revolutionary organisers see the need to direct this struggle towards the
establishment of a new Socialist society, then truly this is still the era of
imperialism and proletarian revolution. Naturally, therefore, Lenin’s writings
offer a vital guide as to the tactics to employ and positions to take in the
course of our organising.
The book Lenin150 (Samizdat)[i]
is both educative as it is inspiring. It is educative as through the
reflections of the various authors on Lenin we get to understand certain
aspects of his ideas and tactics. Most importantly, the authors have tried to
highlight the relevance of Lenin’s ideas on our situation today. It is
inspiring as it exposes the connection that exists between revolutionary
intellectuals and organisers all across the world who, through their
reflections on the theories and ideas of Lenin, demonstrate their understanding
of the need to work for a better society.
As mentioned by Trotsky in his ‘V.I Lenin – On His Fiftieth
Birthday (1920)’[ii],
a necessary quality possessed by Lenin, which helps judge the right moments for
action and the pressing issue at hand, is intuition: ‘the ability to judge
events correctly on the wing, to separate the essential and important from the
husks and incidentals, to fill in mentally the missing parts of the picture, to
draw to conclusion the thoughts of others and above all those of the enemy, to
connect all this into a unified whole and to deal a blow the moment that the
“formula” for this blow comes to mind. This is the intuition for action. In one
of its aspects it merges with what we call shrewdness.’ One truly sees the
importance of this quality in not only helping to shape the Bolshevik Party, as
evidenced in the push for a disciplined vanguard in 1903, but in also making
the revolution itself, as seen in the call for the insurrection of October
1917.
Alain Badiou, in emphasizing the important role played by
Lenin in giving meaning to the word ‘politics’, highlights Lenin’s genius as a
political organiser, particularly upon his return to Russia from exile after
the February 1917 Revolution. The contents of his April Theses ‘was like a
handbook, in the Russian context, of political possibility: ‘politics’ in the
second sense – the truly modern sense – of the word.’[iii]
Lenin’s April Theses, highlighting the proposed points of action for the
Bolsheviks after the February Revolution, helped illuminate the way forward
and, importantly, helped the Bolshevik Party create an intimate connection with
the workers and peasants through putting their interests at the core. Without
this way forward, it would be difficult to imagine an October Socialist
Revolution lead by the vanguard of the workers and peasants in Russia.
In his reflection titled ‘Learning from Lenin – and Doing it
Differently’[iv],
Michael Brie highlights eight direct challenges to the European Left. He urges
the European Left to ‘learn from Lenin in order to bring about – in a new way –
radical, transformational and emancipatory social change.’[v]
Sandoval Cordero proposes two ways of intervention as
regards our ideological engagement; ‘“Unthinking” Marx and Lenin by
understanding them as critical projects under construction, and thinking
Marxism-Leninism “in reverse”, which entails having a radically different
perspective of them.’[vi] Utilising Lenin as a “nucleus of desire” that
allows us to (re-)think organisation and strategy in order to intervene in
concrete political situations, Sandoval highlights the following contributions
made by Lenin as part of this nucleus;[vii]
·
Political contingency, involving always looking
at politics in the direction of the Communist horizon;
·
Political analysis, involving developing
intellectual capacity in the heat of socio-political struggle. Here, we
understand that without theoretical practice one cannot influence political
practice and vice versa;
·
Time and political conjuncture, involving
understanding and taking advantage of the times in politics, in accordance with
the existing power relations; and
·
Organisation and militancy.
Thomas Rudhof-Seibert, in his ‘Eleven Theses on Lenin in the
Corona Era’[viii],
emphasises the need for Leftists to turn once more towards Lenin’s ‘What is to
be done?’
Thomas Rudhof-Seibert highlights three conflicting modes of
thought and action with regard to revolution as described by Lenin in ‘What is
to be Done?’;
·
Truly revolutionary, “social democratic” thought
and action, which according to current language usage, based on the schism of
the Second and the foundation of the Third International, is called Communist;
·
The simultaneously “economistic” and
“opportunistic” limitation of revolutionary activity to a purely trade-unionist
sphere and rationale, which in today’s language is called social democratic or
socialist thought and action;
·
The abstract negation of economism through
“revolutionary” thought and action, which perpetually imagines itself on the
“eve of the revolution”, wants to bring on the dawn via force (“terrorism”) and
thereby also falls prey to opportunism; we refer to this today rather as
anarchism, in the sense of an existentially driven voluntarism.[x]
In order to draw a distinction between the aforementioned
three ways of action, it is important that one grasps the fundamental
priorities as regards workers’ organising and that one remains scientific in
our pursuit of emancipatory change. According to Thomas Rughof-Seibert, social
democracy, anarchism and communism signify the structural differences in all
emancipatory action and thereby form the three elementary answers to the
question, “what is to be done?”[xi]
As Lenin would expound, what revolutionaries need is a vanguard organisation to
spearhead the struggle of the working class.
In viewing the fundamental contribution of Lenin to the
proletarian movement as the theorising of tactics for the proletarian
revolution, one cannot but look into the ‘weakest link’ concept in the ‘chain
of global Capitalism’. Here, Wang Hui[xii]
identifies the ‘weakest links’ as points within the capitalist system that come
to being as a result of imperialism, which is the highest stage of capitalism.[xiii]
‘Thus, there exist in the imperialist
epoch two kinds of ‘weakest link’. One is that which Lenin described in these
terms: “uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of
capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or
even in one capitalist country alone.” The other consists of the cracks and
fissures created by the situation of uneven economic and political development
within a country, as well as the contradictions between the agents of
imperialism among the oppressed people.’[xiv]
This concept cannot be more relevant today, precisely due to the nature of
neo-colonialism, which is the last stage of imperialism[xv],
and which creates a sharpening of the contradictions between the countries at
the core and those at the periphery, as well as the nature of neoliberalism, which
sharpens the stark inequality between the haves and the have nots in all the
countries of the world.
‘The “weakest link” not only marks the weak points in the
ruling order, but also indicates the possibility of rapturing that system.
Thus, the “weakest link” cannot exist of its own accord but relies on the
formation of a revolutionary force. The revolutionary forces of the twentieth
century did not exist in isolation within a single state or territory, but were
national, class, strata and territorial movements which possessed deep
international linkages with each other. In other words, without revolutionary
forces and a revolutionary theory committed to rapturing with the ruling order,
the “weakest links” would simply not exist; without being able to conceptualise
the “weakest links” of the capitalist world-system and the “weakest links” of
national state power together, it is difficult to form revolutionary strategy
and tactics.’[xvi]
Thus, one is able to grasp the importance of the
revolutionary vanguard party in not only raising members of the working class
to the level of revolutionaries, but in also helping create the “weakest link”
within the present ruling order.
Hence, an understanding of the theory and tactics of the
proletarian revolution also involves an understanding of the important role
played by the vanguard organisation in spearheading our push towards
revolutionary change.
Hence, in order to properly honour Lenin on the 150th
anniversary of his birth, revolutionaries and all individuals pushing for
emancipatory change must commit to working within revolutionary vanguard
organisations and to linking these organisations as we seek to attain the
world-wide socialist revolution.
References
Lenin, V. I.
(1977). Collected Works Vol. 5. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Stalin, J.
(1924). Foundations of Leninism. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
[i]
Hjalmar Jorge Joffre-Eichhorn (editor); Patrick Anderson (editor); Johann
Salazar (photography); Published by Daraja Press(2020)
[ii]
Page 11
[iii]
Page 17: Alain Badiou, ‘Lenin, Founder of the Modern Meaning of the Word
‘Politics’’
[iv]
Page 31
[v]
Page 36
[vi]
Page 40: Sandoval Cordero, ‘Lenin From Latin America – Towards a Reactivation
of the Marxism of Political Organization and Strategy’
[vii]
Page 42
[viii]
Page 171
[ix]
Page 171
[x]
Page 172
[xi]
Page 173
[xii]
From The Revolutionary Personality and the Philosophy of Victory –
Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of Lenin’s Birth (page 261), by
Wang Hui
[xiii]
From Lenin’s thesis, published in 1916
[xiv]
Page 267
[xv]
From Kwame Nkrumah’s book ‘Neo-colonialism, the last stage of imperialism’,
published in 1965
[xvi]
Page 267
Comments
Post a Comment